1. We went through the project brainstorming as a group and this is what we came up with. I also have my interview posted on the previous blog post.
2. So far, we don’t have a whole lot of visual elements, but we’ve done some really good brainstorming for how we are going to create the visual elements and what we are going to include. We came up with new ideas about how to make Prop 1 more effective, how to increase drive to get more alternative transportation options, and the pros and cons of certain types of alternative transportation and how they are affected at different times of the year, like during ACL, RTX, SxSW, and summer vs school year. As we dive further in depth, we’re finding new ideas and new ways that we could change how people travel in Austin, and not all of those ideas require many changes from Prop 1 or the infrastructure we currently have. By further utilizing resources we currently have, it creates a larger group of people wanting the changes to be made, and people will be more willing to put in time and money to get those goals accomplished than by trying to come up with new ideas where people are unsure of the outcome.

I interviewed Sandy Guzman, the Legislative Director for Senator Kirk Watson. She is in charge of transportation policy within Austin, and she has a lot of ideas to offer on how to better Austin’s limited transportation. One of the issues I find with public transportation is that there are very limited options for how to get around that take a lot longer than just driving a car. It takes me 4 hours to get from my house to my campus by bus. If I take the metro, it’s a lot less time than the bus, but the times I can ride the metro are very limited so it’s not very useful. I hoped that by interviewing her I could get a bit more knowledge about what inspires her work and how she’s able to create opportunity for improvements. It’s interesting to me that I can look up streets in Portland and San Diego and they are what she sees as her inspiration. It made me wonder if she’s ever spent time one the buses or driving around during all hours of the day in those places to see what makes them similar or different than Austin’s infrastructure. I also was truly impressed that Ms. Guzman was able to so freely answer the problems she sees with public transportation. It made me respect her more as a politician but it also showed me that our infrastructure has gotten so bad that even politicians are starting to believe that voting for a representative shouldn’t prevent funding for ideas that could potentially fix the city’s traffic problem.